ChiefsPlanet - View Single Post - News Hey Small Business Owners...What are you doing to ride the storm out?

**IA_Chiefs_fan** · 03-27-2020, 10:56 PM

There are 31 of us on the payroll at my company, all working out of the same office/warehouse. Working from home isn't an option for most of us because we handle physical goods and ship around 150-200 orders per day on average. Last Wednesday evening I couldn't sleep and was thinking what I could do to mitigate the risk of our company temporarily shutting down.

Thursday morning I purchased a small four bedroom house for the company. Thursday afternoon we began running Ethernet, purchasing desks, and determining which six employees to relocate to the remote site. Last night we moved the sixth employee.

We also started running a night shift until midnight five days a week so we didn't have so many employees in the building at one time. It was a logistics nightmare to basically send our staff three different directions and make sure all areas were covered.

We've also had someone in charge of disinfecting door handles etc. everyday but now we're doing it a LOT. I purchased Merv 13 furnace filters and we set the thermostats to cycle so the fan runs a minimum of 30% of the time. We turned our dehumidifiers up from 40% to 45%. 43% or higher makes it tougher on viruses to spread.

I've bought an insane amount of inventory the past three weeks. I'm gambling that the supply chain is more likely to close than our ability to ship product out. None of our stuff has an expiration date and it will eventually sell no matter what. And we are an "Essential business".

I have told my employees that if it comes down to it I'll work for free for awhile before I lay anyone off. My goal here is to not let a single employee miss a paycheck. Time will tell if that's possible but I'm sure as hell trying. Almost all my employees are bending over backwards to be accommodating. Most of them are friends and family so that adds a ton of pressure in a situation like this.

If we did have to shut down for awhile, my business could survive for a year or more if there was a zero payroll. We have plenty of cash reserves to cover all of our fixed costs.

The last three days have been the worst three days of sales in a very long time. Not encouraging.

03-27-2020, 10:56 PM	#138
IA_Chiefs_fan Supporter IA_Chiefs_fan's Avatar Join Date: Jun 2002	There are 31 of us on the payroll at my company, all working out of the same office/warehouse. Working from home isn't an option for most of us because we handle physical goods and ship around 150-200 orders per day on average. Last Wednesday evening I couldn't sleep and was thinking what I could do to mitigate the risk of our company temporarily shutting down. Thursday morning I purchased a small four bedroom house for the company. Thursday afternoon we began running Ethernet, purchasing desks, and determining which six employees to relocate to the remote site. Last night we moved the sixth employee. We also started running a night shift until midnight five days a week so we didn't have so many employees in the building at one time. It was a logistics nightmare to basically send our staff three different directions and make sure all areas were covered. We've also had someone in charge of disinfecting door handles etc. everyday but now we're doing it a LOT. I purchased Merv 13 furnace filters and we set the thermostats to cycle so the fan runs a minimum of 30% of the time. We turned our dehumidifiers up from 40% to 45%. 43% or higher makes it tougher on viruses to spread. I've bought an insane amount of inventory the past three weeks. I'm gambling that the supply chain is more likely to close than our ability to ship product out. None of our stuff has an expiration date and it will eventually sell no matter what. And we are an "Essential business". I have told my employees that if it comes down to it I'll work for free for awhile before I lay anyone off. My goal here is to not let a single employee miss a paycheck. Time will tell if that's possible but I'm sure as hell trying. Almost all my employees are bending over backwards to be accommodating. Most of them are friends and family so that adds a ton of pressure in a situation like this. If we did have to shut down for awhile, my business could survive for a year or more if there was a zero payroll. We have plenty of cash reserves to cover all of our fixed costs. The last three days have been the worst three days of sales in a very long time. Not encouraging.
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